Opera raised the browser feature ante today by announcing Opera Unite - placing a web server in every client and encouraging end users to share content from their own desktop with the world.

Rather than compete with the cloud-based services that are currently so popular, Opera is proposing, and enabling, a return to how the internet used to work: everyone runs their own host device, with their own applications running on their own hardware, which can then be accessed from anywhere using any web browser.

All this functionality is intended to be rolled into the Opera browser, and is currently available in a Beta release, along with a few applications to demonstrate the kind of functionality Opera thinks could become standard fare.